


pas de deux

by aMassiveDisappointment (BadOldWest)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 11:35:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12887016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/aMassiveDisappointment
Summary: An injury forced ballet star Cassian Andor to retire early and take on the role of director in the company. This Christmas marks his first (behind the scenes) Nutcracker. Made more difficult now Jyn Erso has returned for the role they'd danced together years ago that sparked a brief, but fiery, series of hookups that ended with the show. It's not Cassian's fault no one matches her onstage. Jyn thinks Cassian's being an ass.





	pas de deux

**Author's Note:**

> Summary lifted from anon request.

“With that stick, I keep thinking he’s an old Russian lady…”

  
Cassian beat his cane on the ground, his jaw set, choosing to ignore her. His bad ankle still shifted behind the leg of his chair at even the implication of its presence. “Again.”

  
Bodhi helped Jyn to the ground, she stretched out her feet, pulled at a leg warmer that had fallen, and rolled her shoulders as they retraced their way to the studio space equivalent of stage left, and picked up at the sound of his counting.

  
There was something bouncy to the choreography, where Jyn liked her dancing smooth. Cassian would just be glad to be dancing at all, and Bodhi, caught in their daily crossfires, would rather be anywhere else.

  
“Wrong,” he snapped, slamming the cane down again. “Do it again.”

  
And she said it again, maybe the millionth time he’d heard her say it:

  
_“I hate the Nutcracker.”_

  
.  
Maybe the thirtieth time he heard it, he had smiled.

  
“You don’t die in this one, at least,” he lowered her to the floor and she feigned an extended leg and then half-hearted leap. He’d danced her to her dying breath a few times at this point.

  
They were just marking through the choreography. Fittings for costumes had gone poorly. They forced her to wear a pale pink that had her making the ugliest face throughout most of the adjustments. She twisted her body in the spin that entwined their hands over her head, sliding back two steps, leading when she shouldn’t have been again.  
“Dying at least takes some work, instead of tiptoeing around the stage and watching you pantomime the first two acts for twenty minutes.”

  
He laughed, stepping back.

  
“Don’t make fun of my big solo,” he did the most obnoxious of the upper body moves, rigid and ostentatious with a serious Russian-dance-face, and she laughed.

  
“I miss Swan Lake,” she said dreamily, “That weird grunge one from two seasons ago.”

  
He shook his head. “That one was fun, with all the feathers at the end.”

  
It was one of the common -but lovable- tricks of the company. Flower petals, snow, feathers; most shows ended with a group dance with them raining down, usually half-submerging the audience. After everyone died in Swan Lake, they blew off steam by reviving and swirling in the white fluff.

  
“Do you think we can bribe our way into Giselle?” she pleaded, hands on his chest for the lift they were marking. He wasn’t supposed to pick her up, but he found himself doing it anyway, arms around her, and they stayed still and silent with her feet off the ground like that for a long time.

  
Her legs curved around his waist. His hands stroked down her bare spine.

  
He laughed the thirtieth time she said she hated the Nutcracker, but she also kissed him after she said it.  
.  
Rehearsal unraveled into a shouting match, Bodhi walked out for a breather because he couldn’t defend the behavior of his director nor his partner.

  
Jyn was not permitted to leave. Once the thick metal door swung shut, Cassian was crossing the floor, aided by the short, clipped sound of his cane.

  
“You don’t get to phone it in just because the Holiday Show doesn’t appeal to your ‘art’. Ballet companies are sustained on ticket sales of this stupid show. If it’s shit you won’t get to dance in anything.”

  
Her hands settled on her hips.

  
“You know the stuff I do. This is the Disney Princess of ballet. I’d rather do corps for this show than Clara.”

  
He stepped close, bending down to glower in her face. “Maybe you got this part because some people think you have talent. Maybe you should rise to the occasion and work to your potential.”

  
She twisted away from him, unconsciously in a spiral instead of a retreat. The reel of her motion allowed him to follow. It was like they were dancing again. Once it was clear where she would go, he would follow, cane or not, she stood her ground. Sweat was beading at her neck, flushed from a grueling rehearsal, and her sternum was drumming up and down with her breathing.

  
“You can’t get that show back, Cassian. Not through abusing me.”

  
He stuck his cane down firmly, glaring at her. So maybe that was his last show as a dancer, before the car accident that killed his career forever. So maybe the memories that were blending with the present were keeping him awake at night. He heard the music, stuck in his head, and remembered her body next to his in bed from a time when it was similarly trapped there. He kept expecting to find her back there, her naked body so strong and beautiful he didn’t want to leave his own thoughts.

  
So maybe she knew, read it in his soul, that he punished her only a fraction as badly as he punished himself.

  
But that would require talking, about this, about them, about himself.

  
He stalked away.

  
“Your mobility is shit. You’re not warming up properly. You don’t think you have to stretch for this one? It’s just as grueling as Swan Lake, even though it doesn’t suit your artist’s sensibilities.”

  
“I’ve done this before,” she snapped, a curl escaping the tight bun at the top of her head. His eyes fell to it before he looked back at her angry expression.  
He shook his head. “Show me.”

  
She glared, swinging her right leg back and catching it in her hand. With some arranging she had the leg bent all the way back, foot pulled to kiss the back of her head. He circled her as she posed, a dark glare on his face.

  
With a single step, he was behind her, pushing gently but firmly, and the leg raised higher, tighter to her body. She flinched, there was an ache in her hip socket, but she had gotten lazy since casting had been announced, and he knew it.

  
“You’re not stretching.”

  
The words fell heavily, and he didn’t let her go. She wobbled, and he eased her one-legged weight against his chest, but didn’t let her drop the leg. Her face knitted up in strain.

  
“Okay, I’m not, _Madame.”_

 _  
_ He let her go, and her leg dropped with a heavy thud.

  
“You could have hurt me.”

  
“I would never do anything to hurt you,” he dismissed, returning to his chair. “Have you been logging your meals?”

  
Jyn rolled her eyes. _“Sadist._ Yes.”

  
“Show me.”

  
She stalked over to her bag and pulled out an old notebook. He cringed at the words chinese take-out scrawled from the night before, but her snarky chicken scratch had added the footnote _-craving; just to get a taste of it- Approx. 500 Calories Worth._ The rest was standard grilled chicken, red meat, salad.

  
“You didn’t add lunch today.”

  
“That’s because I went to iHop for a triple stack of pancakes,” she snapped sarcastically, and he handed her notebook back without looking at her.  
“Clean up your act Jyn. If I could dance with anyone again, it would be you.”

  
She shoved the book into her bag, halfway out the door. “You picked the wrong show for sentiment.”

  
.  
“Every little girl who wants to be Clara this December isn’t going to know Clara _is a very naughty girl,”_ Cassian hefted her hips over the bars, pressing them into her lower belly as her hands gripped the lowest level, blood rushing to her face as he spread her open to lick. Cassian wasn’t picky with bodies, but Jyn’s exact 100 pounds of muscle was ideal for getting creative. _“But I’ll know.”_

“Thanks, _Sugar Plum,_ ” she sneered, but only until he got that mouth on her.

  
Cassian had always sort of adored her, the idea of her, since they first worked together. A barfight ballerina. Aggressive, leather-clad, sharp tongued. The most graceful dancer he had ever met, her rehearsal leotards prim and neutral toned and worn under a heavy leather jacket. Ballerinas had to spend their careers hiding their strength, making it look easy, but she _exuded_ it. He had to take a moment to calm down the first time he saw her with her pointe shoes and the jacket on. He noted, if he should be so lucky, he’d try to persuade her to wear only those two things.

  
The real thing was so much better than any idea.

  
She gripped the bar in her hand, whimpering as her face heated in a head rush from her position. He could just bend slightly down and her slit was level with his face, tights torn open, leotard pulled aside to slip his tongue inside her. Her legs just hung down uselessly, like her upper body on the other side, and she just let him work her over. This man had folded her over the barre like she was nothing, and the worse thing was, she liked it. She lifted her head when the flush became too much, and saw everything they were doing in the row of mirrors, and that was the end of his teasing and edging; she was done for.

  
.  
Backstage of a ballet was one of the most beautiful sights Jyn had ever seen. It was sequins and tulle and shadows and lace and seemingly hundreds of beautiful, strong women whispering and peering from the wings. Stretching athletically, marking their choreography, joking with prop masters.

  
Stage lights on Cassian’s face when they had a moment backstage, where she’d lean her head on his shoulder to watch the show from offstage.

  
Once, he snuck her into the theater after everyone went home -even the techies- with a bottle of wine smuggled from the opening-night gala, and they had sex with some creative use of the curtain ropes. The best part was when he dragged her out onto the stage, a thousand empty seats watching, and lay her on her stomach and fucked her out in the open. She shivered and came so many times; until she was loud enough in her pleasure for him to deem her performance satisfactory for their imaginary audience.  
“When I watch you, you belong onstage,” his face was tucked in the nape of her neck, holding her hips steady for his slow, torturous thrusts. “God, look at you.”

  
She threw on her leather jacket over her silky little prima ballerina Gala dress, his tux was hopelessly ruffled, and they went home to split a cupcake in her kitchen before retiring for the night, sore-muscled and tired.

.

Jyn brushed passed Bodhi on her way out of the dressing room, bundled up and grumpy. He placed a steady hand on the top of her head, some kind of chakra un-block, and she nuzzled into it despite her furtive attempt at escape.

 

“I love you, but I don’t rehearse twelve hours a day for this production to be Clara-less.”

She sighed and let her shoulder fall against the wall.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

No excuses, which was very like her.

Bodhi sighed.

“It’s not all you. He _is_ hard on you. You represent this whole part of his life he’ll never have again. You’d be the same way with him if it were you.”

She lifted her chin defiantly.

“I would have cut my losses if it were me. One of these days he’s going to beat me with that cane.”

“Look,” Bodhi rubbed his jaw, leaning closer. “There’s something kind of beautiful about this, okay? And sad. You guys were so good together. Not like a Fred and Ginger thing. You didn’t need each other to be at your best. You could go off and do it alone. And there was a respect from that and you each had it for each other, no carrying each other, just the respect of a competent partner. He needs you now. Needs you to channel all that talent he had. I know you’re carrying a lot on your shoulders. Just… _I don’t want rehearsals to suck anymore._ ”

Jyn clenched her jaw, taking a sip from her water bottle.

She wondered if Fred and Ginger ever iced their feet together at the end of the day, tangled in the same plastic bucket on the floor of his living room, watching TV and idly eating whatever frozen dinner they found in the freezer (pre-packaged food had a more accurate calorie count) to try and ignore the icy pain. She’d nudge his feet, pretending she wasn’t, but they’d both know from the rattle of ice in the water in the bucket. They had to share a bucket because in the perpetually single world of ballet, no one had two ice buckets.

That was not Fred and Ginger, or even Rudolf and Margot.

That was Jyn and Cassian.

.  
Mon Mothma had called Jyn into her office earlier in the week and offered her the title role in Giselle for that Spring. Plenty of dying. Jyn had softened up after that, rehearsal was uneventful. Cassian only looked at her to assess her dancing, only spoke to her to adjust her footing, only gave her the attention required to teach her.

His coldness was a harsh breath of reality, while he used to push her so hard, to the point of crying a few times, now his distance and detachment stung. He’d had so much faith in her to press her under his hand, using her to regain his sense of control of the art. But even his role as a teacher instead of a partner felt like a downgrade from before the accident, and even further down was a disinterested teacher.  
Adjusting her placement, his hands on her hips and then sliding down her thighs, had only made her lose her breath once. He stalked away on his cane, not even noticing that he still had an affect on her.  
He had always been her favorite partner.

“Better today,” he observed gruffly as she packed up her bag. Bodhi ducked out the second rehearsal was over to avoid any added stress. The pianist had a similar method, but it was for smoke breaks. The room was tensely alone. “Still needs work.”

It was never just praise. It was a reminder that the positive fell short.

“When I hear Christmas music, I have panic attack now, so thanks.”

Cassian was her director now. He could have her fired in a second. So despite the attitude, she was grateful he just leaned heavily on his cane and allowed her to be her asshole self. There was a look in his eye, an inkling that he liked watching that.

“That’s what I like to hear. I’d just focus on your face during Act II, I know you hate it but I should be the only one who can tell, instead of everybody.”

She rolled her eyes and she laced up her boots.

“Fuck you too,” she grit out between clenched teeth, and he flinched.

“If you’re not careful, the Nutcracker is going to have a heroine die at the end,” he muttered, absently smacking the piano base with his cane.

“It’s no coincidence ballet has so many women killing themselves,” she shot back, jumping to her feet. Her hamstrings were killing her, and her face tensed up from the very bad idea of getting up like that.

“Some of us would kill ourselves to be back in ballet,” he had the upper hand, the pitiable story, the greater pain, so nothing she could say would ever work with him. He wasn’t going to let her in to try and _fix_ it. That’s what he kept showing her.

She just walked away.

.

The lifestyle of militant self-care in ballet was a positive thing for people like Jyn and Cassian, who would not have cared enough to do it otherwise. Jyn counted calories. Jyn got enough sleep. Jyn exercised -no running, that was bad on the knees-. Jyn took ice baths and drank water and stretched.

And there was a time where Cassian was there for it too.

There was something brutal about a witness to an ice bath. It felt like a private thing, even though she wasn’t naked for them, but the stretch out in the tub and shiver and train your breathing. He sat beside her, smiling at her slight groans, her skin turning slick and pink. He held out his hand with a sympathetic smile, letting her squeeze when the cold was too much. The rule he had given her, years before, that had probably been passed down to him too, was for an ice bath, stay as long as you can stand it, and then add five more minutes to prove you can.

She grit her teeth.

“Five more minutes.”

He nodded and started the timer on his phone.

She let go the breath she was holding when the alarm sounded, thrusting her body out of the tub by lifting herself with her arms braced on the sides, knees curled to her chest.

He handed her a towel when she slithered to the bathmat, picking an ice cube out of her sports bra. He grimaced before taking her place in the frigid water.

“We may have pushed it today,” he admitted, and she glared at him.

“Don’t say that for my benefit. I’m fine.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Clearly I can’t keep up.”

“We needed to get that lift.”

“We needed to work on that lift for three more rehearsals until Draven would admit that it was impossible, and then alter it to something a little less impossible.”

She shook her head, sliding an energy bar out of the pocket of her jacket, tossed over her towel rack before she climbed in. She took a grumpy bite. “I can’t have you doubt that we’ll succeed, Sugar Plum.”

.  
Opening night of the Nutcracker went well; Jyn smiled and preened and caught herself sweating the footwork of the show- it wasn’t an easy show which made her annoyance for it almost worse, and her dancing with Bodhi flew by until bows.

  
She laughed with the girls she knew in the corps when the curtain went down, bathed in silvery stage light. Snow was still drifting down from the catwalk. She swirled in it, but once she was relatively alone behind the curtain, a familiar face caught her eye.

  
Cassian handed her a bouquet of flowers, looking uncomfortable to be back there without being a dancer, so handsome in his suit it choked her up.  
Cassian was bitter about his accident. It made Jyn feel like she had no right to be. Even if it cost her him.

  
Jyn mourned the loss, privately, in ways that made her angry that she didn’t understand. Jyn would never dance with this man again, and that wasn’t fair, and she was hugging him before she knew what she was doing because more than anything she just wanted to have her partner back.

  
Fake snow peppered her shoulders. He was so, so glad the costumers took his notes on giving her a nightgown with straps because the strength in her shoulders was magnificent. He sighed, patting her heavily-sprayed hair.

  
“You were beautiful,” he paid her a rare compliment. She just tensed her arms, pulling him close. He kissed her cheek.

  
Watching her from offstage, Bodhi dancing his part, was the hardest thing he had ever seen. Like his life had outrun him, and he was watching every step it took away from him with her.

“There’s no one I wanted out there with me more than you.”

His hand tensed around his cane.

  
“Thank you,” he murmured, and he pulled away too soon. She watched him vanish under the sign marked ‘exit’ in bright red letters.

.

Jyn pulled up video when she had gotten home to her apartment; an old one on the Company’s website for World Ballet Day. She and Cassian were principles that season, the first time together, and they were workshopping that grungy, weird Swan Lake. They were working with Luke for his first choreography gig, and it was an exciting time for any dancer to premiere a new work because the entire ballet was built around that first collaboration. To preview it, Luke hosted a video working through a rehearsal of a few minutes where they ran what they had so far, Jyn as Odette and Cassian as Siegfried. A few board members had been there that day as an audience, and then the video was published for the occasion of the show’s approval for the next season. This served as the proposal, and it was higher stakes than it looked on the unassuming clip.

She had only really been able to watch Cassian as a dancer as his partner, not as an outsider to their unit. She knew he’d catch her, but she never _watched_ him catch her. Luke counted and explained as they went - _“this is the scene where she’s transforming, now she’s beckoning to him because he’s afraid, and here is where he recognizes her…”-_ and would stop to ask if Jyn could get more height on a leg extension or propose a faster or slower pace. She’d liked these workshops when they came out, exploring the depths of these moments of collaboration.

Jyn never liked watching her own dancing, but Cassian made her look good. Even her distracted leaps were trusting; he was never going to drop her. Even when she was being held over his head, when Luke called for them to stop, he had her back on her feet without a hiccup.

But it wasn’t just the dancing she found herself missing.

Studios were notoriously cold, so she saw, from a camera’s perspective, their old habit of standing up against each other, her back exposed from the low cut of her leotard, so his front would press against her spine for warmth, his chin resting on the top of her head. The excuse was the cold studio, but they started resting there as their default even if she wore a sweater or wrap that day. Rested against each other, faces the same look of guarded concentration, eyes flickering over the choreographer’s movements.

She never remembered Cassian’s arms being around her, but there they were, and her arms hooked around his perpendicularly so she held them to her chest. It seemed automatic when Jyn in the video did it.

She’d never known how thoroughly Cassian paid attention to her, as Luke had him stand back to demo a spin, or have her adjust her legs.

She knew how that day went. A Board Member had brought their young daughter, and Jyn answered shy questions about becoming a ballerina, Cassian egging her on to make her look good. Then, to celebrate, they’d gotten a steak for their carefully budgeted calories and needed protein, pretended they knew how to cook anything -Cassian got a decent sear without burning anything but steak is kind of empty without sides, so she managed to find a mashed potato recipe that she snuck more and more butter into when his back was turned.

They ate their modest feast, icing their feet as usual in the same bucket on her living room floor, cuddled on the couch.

She thought, at the time, they hid it so well. When they’d be working in the studio together during late hours and he’d peel off her leotard and have her on the floor, sweaty and begging. No one knew she would drop to her _-padded-_ knees in his dressing room, sucking his cock before a performance, her makeup untouched because she wouldn’t let him put a hand on her. She thought they hid that it was something close to love at this point, the companionship and the understand and the support.

It was all over their faces in that rehearsal clip. The bemused smiles when Luke requested they start over, but this time _higher._ The hand on her back as he led her back to her spot. How well they moved together, in a way you can’t rehearse.  

She hadn’t watched this video since he had been injured. Since this time wasn’t over just yet.

It was all there. And now it was gone.

.

The accident fucked up his entire life.

Everything he had worked for was gone in an instant, to the point that it didn’t matter that there were things that could last. Like Jyn.

Not long after he woke up in a hospital bed, she stormed into the room in slush-covered pointe shoes and a leather jacket over her rehearsal clothes.

She hissed at the sight of his cast like she had heard about a death in the family, but she still didn’t know about how he would need to use a cane for the rest of his life.

“I was in rehearsal,” she explained, like it wasn’t obvious, as she dropped to the chair next to him. She was holding the jacket around her shoulders, she hadn’t even put her arms through the sleeves.

She went for his hand, but he withdrew it. Her hands fell uselessly in her lap.

There was no conversation. Cassian didn’t know how to talk about it. He just appeared at her rehearsals one day, and she almost fell on her ass from the sight of the cane. She’d heard rumors; but he never confirmed a single one with her before barking orders about turnouts and straight backs.

It was easy that way, to forget they were partners. To forget what they could do together.

.  
He wasn’t expecting the text so close to Christmas, on the Eve of it, no less.

  
**I need help with Giselle.**

  
He tried so hard not to reply. It was Christmas Eve, but it wasn’t like he had anything better to do. She was perfect as Giselle. She could dance it in her sleep.

  
**Ask me tomorrow.**

 **  
** Her reply was instant.

  
**Studio 1. 9pm Sharp.**

  
There was a light snowfall, so the short walk to the building was at least festive and crisp.

  
He was at the place, at the time, and she stepped out in her rehearsal wear dangling something in her hand. Shoes.

  
He knew his maker.

  
As a dancer, you always know your maker.

  
Typically European, your first few years are in intense correspondence _-I have low arches, can the heel be higher, I like more bend in the sole-_ until shoes were perfected and tailor made for each dancer.

  
He’d thrown out close to fifty pairs at the time of his accident. They were bought in bulk in anticipation for how quickly they wore out.

  
He threw them out and he had thrown Jyn out too-in anger, frustration, and pain.

  
She saved him these, and a bit of herself.

  
“I have one Christmas gift for you,” she was staring at the floor. Reluctant. “I’ve reserved the space for the season. As a principle, you know, I have connections…”

  
Jyn bit her lip, glancing up at him.

  
“I want to dance with you again.”

  
He dropped the end of his cane against the floor, his denial flaring in his throat.

  
“I can’t, Jyn.”

  
“It’s not for anyone else,” she grabbed his wrist, clearly sure he was going to just leave her there. Hanging. “We’ll choreograph around the ankle. Contemporary, and we're not doing lifts. At least, you're not You can use me as support, and we’ll base the movement on that. Just to give us a chance to do this again,” she looked up at him, her emotions, rarely, all over her face. “I miss it.”

  
“Is this your artistic fulfillment?” he shot back bitterly. She didn’t get it. He couldn’t restart from the beginning. He’d never get to what he was.

  
“I miss you, Cassian,” she finally snapped up at him, her face right up in his. “I lost my partner, I lost my friend, I lost maybe one of the happiest times of my life with you. I’m just trying to give us back something. I want that feeling back.”

  
Tears squeezed out of his eyes, and he grabbed her by the shoulders. The cane dropped to the floor, and he pulled her close. She was silenced by the affection.

  
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That I was trying to punish you for not being able to relive it without me.”

  
“I’m sorry it happened to you,” she kissed his cheek. “You never listen when anyone says it. But I’m so sorry.”

  
He stroked her hair, soft, messy; Jyn.

  
“Most women would try to get the sex part back, for the record. Not literally the hardest thing to regain.”

  
“You’re an asshole,” she laughed, hugging him. His weight settled against her with his cane useless at their feet. “This was the test for you to get both.”

  
“Then rehearsal has started,” he murmured in her ear, squeezing her once.

  
“Really?”

  
“It will not be easy, and I won’t be any fun to work with. It’ll be just like rehearsals with you.”

  
She rolled her eyes. “On the floor. Start stretching.”

  
He complied, wincing when he even pointed the toes of the bad leg. This was going to take work. But Jyn was fumbling with a CD player near the mirror, and familiar Tchaikovsky filled the room. She looked back at him.

  
She was promising to do that work. As much as it took.

  
“For the dancing or for sex?”

  
She kicked the center of his back before taking her place beside him.

  
_“Both,”_ she muttered under her breath, but her face vanished in her knees as she folded herself in half, hands wrapped around the arches of her feet.

  
He thanked God for the Nutcracker.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments! Please! I feel like that part of the fandom is dying off! If you do I'll add the sex scene they need to stretch for and some dirty-dancing rehearsal scenes, because, why not.


End file.
